Growing up, Cody Greenes moved around a lot. His father worked in the oil industry, so the family lived in England, Alaska and San Diego, where Cody graduated from high school.
While Greenes had a bar mitzvah and observed Passover, he didn’t have many other Jewish experiences. His family wasn’t that observant. They also never stayed in one place long enough to form a community.
This peripatetic life changed for Greenes when he discovered Moishe House Philadelphia as a law school student at Rutgers University. (He lived in Camden at the time.) He started by attending the birthday party of a law school friend at the house, and eventually, he moved in. He ended up living in Moishe House in his late 20s.
Today, Greenes, 42, is a member of Reform Congregation Keneseth Israel, a host of Shabbat dinners and Sukkot meals, a parent of a child who attends the Perelman Jewish Day School and a former board member for several Jewish organizations, including Moishe House, now known as Mem Global, and the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia.
Mem Global is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year, and it pitched Greenes as a profile subject to the Philadelphia Jewish Exponent. It did so because, as Greenes jokes, he is the poster child for what the nonprofit organization can accomplish. Mem Global is a national network of houses in which Jews in their 20s and 30s can organize peer-led living arrangements, gatherings and programs. Mem is the 13th letter of the Hebrew alphabet, and it symbolizes connection, water and the flow of ideas, according to memglobal.org.
When Greenes’ law school friend Becky invited him, he just kind of went with it. She was popular, and his upbringing taught him that he had to say yes to experiences to make friends quickly.
He ended up finding connection, water and the flow of ideas.
“Something about being with a house of Jewish peers … it wasn’t even a Jewish event … it was Becky’s birthday party. I just felt at home,” he recalled. “Enough where I said, ‘Oh, what else are you guys doing?’”
The next event he attended was a Shabbat dinner.
“I had never been to a Shabbat dinner in my life,” Greenes recalled.
At the dinner, he found “good food” and “fun people.” He also “didn’t have to talk about law school.” The group discussed Judaism in “a super casual way,” Greenes recalled.
The law student started to host those Shabbat dinners and learn the blessings. A year or two into his time at Moishe House, he led a kiddush blessing at his grandparents’ 60th wedding anniversary. Around the same time, he led a havdalah service on the beach in Ventnor.
“Easy things like that, and then you get more comfortable,” Greenes said.
One time, a fellow resident criticized Greenes for pronouncing a word wrong. But Rebecca Bar, the founder of Moishe House Philadelphia, admonished the resident.
“She said, ‘No, Cody, this is ok. This is how you learn,’” Greenes recalled.
Later, Greenes was cooking Shabbat dinner when he started using a dairy pan to cook broccoli. Since the meal was meat-based, the broccoli could not be cooked in a dairy pan.
That was the kosher rule. Greenes didn’t know it. Bar gently told him that he had to use the meat pan to steam the broccoli.
But the experience wasn’t just about religious rituals. Greenes made friends, met his future wife and got close with the future best man in his wedding. He even briefly considered leaving the law to become “a professional Jew,” as he put it, applying to the Federation and some other organizations.
He eventually found his niche in the legal world — asbestos cases — but Judaism remained his community. In his 30s, after moving out of Moishe House and settling down with his wife, Greenes served as a board member at Congregation Adath Jeshurun, the family’s synagogue at the time. He also led a weekly Shabbat service for Jews in their 20s and 30s and served on the board of the Federation’s Center for Jewish Life and Learning.
Today, as his kids grow into school age, he’s taking a step back from community leadership, but he still hosts regular Shabbat dinners and an annual Sukkah party. He also donates to Mem Global and the Federation, as well as KI and Perelman through membership and enrollment dues.
He plans to get more actively involved again in the future. He compared this moment in his life to the Shmita year in Judaism, when, every seventh year, Jews let the fields rest and forgive debts to allow for a reset.
“The exciting part is I just don’t know right now,” he said.